In fact, the Houston owner has told friends in the league that he wishes the Rockets would play a much faster style, like the Phoenix Suns. With Yao as his franchise player, and one of the most unathletic rosters in the Western Conference, it's hard to understand why a coach would try that with the Rockets. As it looks now, Alexander will get the chance to find his man. http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=aw-vangundy050607&prov=yhoo&type=lgns I googled about the Rockets and came up with this old article. After reading the article, I'm not really sure why people are saying Les is one of the best owner of a franchise. All he wanted was a better way to market his team, make his team more exciting to watch to make more money for himself. He doesn't seen to care too much about championship. On the other hand, Mark Cuban may be a douche, but he really cares about his team and about winning.
well, i think part of it was he believed the whole league was moving int hat direction, so he wanted to do the same. Uusally the more you win the more money you make, so he figured he'd get both. I think most of the praise for Les is because he's a stand up guy, he doesnt bad mouth guys and he's loyal. Just look at how he backed up tmac during his injury. I bet you Les would have given nash the contract he wanted, cuban didn't and that probably cost them a ring.
Might I remind everyone about the Devin Harris - Jason Kidd trade.... The league is moving in that direction anyhow you don't really have a choice. Faster game, less contact, higher scores, = more exciting to watch for fans who don't really understand basketball.
rockets during the 2006-2007 season (when that old article u posted): alston battier hayes head howard lucas III mcgrady ming mutombo novak padgett snyder v-span sura wells tsakalidis i think our team now is VASTLY improved from that roster. are u saying our owner isn't trying to win a championship? if u didnt notice we're about to play game 6 in round 2 of the playoffs without our 2 best players. The rockets are much better offensively than we were w/ JVG, and yes we play a more uptempo style of bball (or at least we try ). I commend Les for making moves, or at least allowing DM to do his magic. He doesnt have to show his passion for winning by being a completely immature ******* during games like Cuban. He's the owner of a team that is improving and trying to win a championship. I dont understand why u think trying to make money is a bad thing, its important for any team to be a financially viable organization, or there wouldnt even be a team to win a championship in the 1st place.
Well, I doubt that....I used to live in Dallas so I think I know a bit more Remember Nash always was exhausted come playoff time? That was THE reason Cuban let him go. I think Les would do the same. Just check the stats and awards on Nash and Dirk. Sure they are buddies but the split made both super stars. Not likely if Nash stayed in Dallas. For Dirk, he became THE star for the Mavs and he was able to elevate his game. For Nash, he went to a perfect team for him, system + coach + players around him. As for the rings, the Mas was clearly a more talented team than Miami and should have won that year.
Some owners think they know more than the coach and the GM. Les is one of those owners and he is wrong like the rest of them.
I was reading this article about Battier but it also gives a lot of insight into the Daryl Morey and the Rockets statistical staff: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html While I think Alexander wanted the Rockets to be more uptempo as that is more entertaining I'm guessing that he figured that JVG might not be as suited to working the the type of statistical analysis that Morey had brought to the team.
Its easy to say that JVG was saddled with inferior talent but he had the opportunity to shape the team and develop players. Two years ago who knew that Brooks, Landry, Scola or Wafer were so good. Many of these players don't command salaries any bigger than what Snyder, Head and Howard had so it isn't a matter of being cheap. Also consider that JVG didn't like to play young players much there is no guarentee that Brooks, Landry or Lowery develop as much under JVG.
this really is old news. everybody who isn't blinded by hate knows that the main reasons jvg never won a playoff series with the rockets were lack of talent and lack of health. this is a players league and it never was about coaching philosophies or playing styles because we had a proven coach and a proven system. the supporting cast next to yao and t-mac just wasn't good enough to be a real contender. now a lot of people will also blame this on jvg. he didn't play young players. he brought in over the hill veterans. etc., etc. reality is, though, that the rockets front office just failed to get the talent together that was needed. this had more to do with les than it had to do with jvg. or do any of you really believe that jvg would have preferred clarence weatherspoon over carl landry? would he really have preferred rod strickland over kyle lowry? vassilis spanoulis over von wafer? john lucas over aaron brooks? or juwan howard over luis scola? no he wouldn't. but he wouldn't have played the young talents! right? no, actually, wrong. luther head played about 28 mpg under jvg but only about 16 mpg under adelman. chuck hayes played more minutes under jvg, too. steve novak played about as much under jvg as under adelman. jvg played john lucas about as many minutes per game as adelman played brooks in his rookie season. even then 2nd round pick vassilis spanoulis got some minutes under jvg. current 2nd round pick joey dorsey on the other hand basically hasn't played at all for adelman. reality is, coaches play good players. the young guys we had with jvg as our coach simply weren't as good as the young guys we have now. but enough about jvg. he's gone and he won't come back no matter if that was fair, the right move or whatever. so let's come to our current great head coach rick adelman. i've said it in the past and i'll say it again. when les alexander fired jvg, looked at his roster and decided that his team needed to play more like the suns that really was a bad decision. it's not that it was generally a stupid idea or that he hired a bad coach in adelman. it's just that when he decided to go in this direction he should've known that it was time to part ways with his two franchise players, too. it is (and always was) pretty obvious that neither mcgrady nor yao are best suited for this style of basketball. yao is the most dominant offensive force in the low post and mcgrady is an elite playmaker on the wing. the best offensive system for this combo would be a slow it down inside out half court system. you don't maximize yao's strengths if you try to run or put him in the high post. and you don't maximize t-mac's strengths if you want to take the ball out of his hands to put it into the hands of inferior playmakers. the bottom line is that we had the perfect system for our franchise players under jvg and the offense that adelman initially tried to install didn't make t-mac nor yao better players. that's why les should have traded mcgrady and yao when he decided to go in this direction. that he didn't do this tells me that he either should let his front office make those decisions in the future or that winning the championship is not always his ultimate goal.
It's easy to say because it's true. No amount of hypothetical retroactive turd polishing of scrubs like V-Span or John Lucas III is going to change that, or pretending that Luther Head, probably the only half-decent rookie ever during his tenure, only played because of injuries. Which is an outright falsehood, disproven many times on this BBS.
Dallas almost got swept by the Nuggets. They are doing worse than us, with more healthy players. We have lost Yao Ming, T-Mac, and Deke and we are still competing with the Lakers.
The Rockets have been very competitive in this series, even though our T-Mac, Yao, and Deke out. Cuban's sorry ass time was 3 pts away from getting swept by the Nuggets, last night, with a full roster. They had their top 2 scorers and their best defensive player, but almost got swept?!?!
That's because Les took the credits from the great management, coaches and players who worked for him. I think Les is very cheap. He even shopped the Dream. Coach JVG maximzed very limited talents and DM brought in great role players. But I believe this year coach RA underachhieved. If Coach JVG coached this team, it's definitely a 60+ win team. Many of fans had forgot how poor talents JVG had. Without Tmac, Yao hardly won any games in 2004-5, without both of them, Rockets couldn't win any game. But now they beated a top western team in a playoff game. The talent level is much higher. Now 7 different players in Rockets scored 20+ in at least one playoff game. How many scorers of JVG's team had?
Assuming Van Gudy had power to "shape" the team-- and what power he had was clearly not on par with what Morey can do as the GM--, what exactly could he have done to get better guys prior to 2007 instead of the non-highlighted names? Could any of these guys have been traded for much better players back then? For the FAs among them, could JVG have signed much better players in the market wtih the same salary? Was JVG primarily responsible for drafting Luther Head and Steve Novak instead of, say, David Lee and Paul Millsap?
So I guess hiring DM, buying Landry's pick, and investing millions of dollars in statistical analysis equipment and staff was done just to better market the team? Riiiiight Les is one of the greatest owners in the league, and if you don't like him why don't go hang around the Spurs or Phoenix boards instead? I'm sure you'd love their owners
If Gundy was still around, 1) No way in hell would he have traded Rafer Alston away. 2) No way would he have been able to coach an offense this year without McGrady AND gotten this team past first round. 3) No way would he have taken Aaron brooks and Wafer out of his doghouse, considering the number of boneheaded mistakes they make. (BTW, Brooks was an Adelman move and I doubt Gundy would be interested in a quick pointguard who scores in bunches. He would be strictly looking at Brooks from a defensive point of view and that would scare the **** out of him. Offense was an afterthought for Gundy). The best one? If Gundy had not screwed up, we would have had Brandon Roy on this team. Gundy was short sighted and that's why he was booted. Actually wait.... it was also because he couldn't coach an offense worth a crap.
Moreyball has changed everything now. We can run whichever style we want cause we FINALLY have the talent to play either way. You saw uptempo style in full exibition in game 4 and everbody knows what happens when we slow and start feeding Yao the ball in the paint. The guy is on money everytime, ask Bynum, Gasol, Oden or Pryzbilla.
Les made the right decision to give Gundy the boot. He made even better decision to get Adelman, who coaches both offense and defense and thus a well rounded team, and also keeps the big picture in mind. With Adelman, it's not about living day to day. He plans for the future, both in terms of developing talent as well as building the team. The mistake Les made was back in summer of 95. Phil Jackson had shown interest in coaching the Rockets tandem of Tracy and Yao. Instead of grabbing that chance, Les made a blunder of extending Gundy's contract. The only coach better than Adelman to me is Phil Jackson. They both have a lot of similarities in coaching style. 1) Both Adelman and Phil Jackson coach the team to play offense as well as defense. 2) Both coaches like to coach ball movement and player movement. 3) Both coaches emphasize and teach the players to react to the situation. 4) Both coaches keep the big picture in mind and let the players play and learn from their mistakes. 5) Both coaches treat regular season as a training ground for the playoffs, again keeping the bigger picture in mind. The difference is that Phil is better at mind games. He likes to get into opposing coaches heads and knows how to manipulate the refrees thru the media. Phil is also a better motivator and that would have helped Tmac and Yao's game immensely. Les missed out on the opportunity to attain Phil when he had a chance, but at least he redeemed himself by getting rid of Gundy and replacing him with second best choice in Phil. Better late than never.
Given that the Rockets made no statistical improvement on offense the year after Adelman took over from JVG, what does that say about Adelman?
